American Lit Test 2 – Flashcards

breaking away from tradition through political, social, and religious views; belief that the world is what we say it is; no such thing as absolute truth; experience with alienation, loss, and despair; and celebration of the individual and inner strength.

How it Feels to be Colored Me & The Gilded Six Bits

I, Too, Mulatto, The Negro Speaks of Rivers, Mother to Son, The Weary Blues, Song for a Dark Girl, Visitors to the Black Belt, Note on Commercial Theatre, Democracy, Theme for English B

A Rose for Emily & Barn Burning

The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The Leader of the People & The Grapes of Wrath

Invisible Man

Kitchenette Building, The Mother, The White Troops had Their Orders but the Negroes Looked Like Men, The Last Quatrain of the Battle of Emmett Till, and To the Diaspora

Good Country People

The Woman Warrior

Defender of the Faith

Lullaby

Woman Hollering Creek

Dear John Wayne, I was Sleeping Where the Black Oaks Move, Grief, and Fleur

At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School, Pawn Shop, Crow Testament

Sexy

Drown

The Yellow Wallpaper

The Souls of Black Folk

The Harlem Renaissance was a transformable period in time when poetry changed a nation of African-Americans to an incredible level. Langston Hughes was one of the leading black writers in that time period, and wrote many different types of literature. He wrote, and created a new literary art form called jazz poetry.

Raised in a predominantly black community in Florida, Hurston did not fully understand racism's negative impact on African Americans until she leaves home. She then sees that she is "tragically colored" and judged by the color of her skin. Hurston recounts a number of experiences in which racism has affected her personal life. She describes being discriminated against in jazz clubs and by white people in general. In spite of and because of this treatment, she sees herself as a strong black woman. Hurston uses the metaphor of colored bags to describe what people are like: bags full of hopes, desires, disappointments, and the stuff of life. If you were to dump these bags out, everyone would be more or less the same, regardless of the color of their skin/bag.

In Zora Neal Hurston's, "How it feels to be Colored Me," she exhibits characteristics of Modernist writing. For example, throughout her story, Hurston stresses to her readers that she is not ashamed of her skin color and that all African Americans should embrace it. During this time period, the underlying principle of Modernism was to break free from tradition. Hurston exemplifies that by rejecting the idea that African American's main concern should be how they were being portrayed negatively during this time. Her famous line, "I am not tragically black," symbolizes how she is breaking away from tradition.

"The Gilded Six-Bits" begins with a snapshot of Eatonville and the house where Missie May and Joe live. When we're first introduced to Missie May, she's bathing herself in the tub. She realizes it's getting late and that her husband, Joe will be home soon. Before she can get her slippers on Joe comes home and they play fight, a ritual that takes place every Saturday. After some cute roughhousing, Joe cleans up and they sit down for a spread of southern goodies. Joe announces he wants to take Missie out for ice cream, a new place run by a rich, northern African-American man, "Mister Otis D. Slemmons, of spots and places." (35) Like a school kid with a crush, Joe can't stop talking about Slemmons. Joe and Missie go to the ice cream parlor several times and Missie happily plays trophy wife. Unfortunately, the story takes a disastrous turn when Slemmons starts chasing after her, promising money in exchange for sex. One night after getting off work early, Joe discovers his wife in bed with Slemmons and his happy home turns sour. Joe becomes cold and distant, until he realizes Missie is pregnant. Of course, the question is, who's the daddy? Not until the end do we find out and when we do, we're able to breathe a huge sigh of relief—and so can Joe.

The narrator recalls the time of Emily Grierson's death and how the entire town attended her funeral in her home, which no stranger had entered for more than ten years. Emily's house is the last vestige of the grandeur of a lost era. The town's previous mayor, had suspended Emily's tax responsibilities to the town after her father's death, justifying the action by claiming that Mr. Grierson had once lent the community a significant sum. As new town leaders take over, they make unsuccessful attempts to get Emily to resume payments. When members of the Board of Aldermen pay her a visit, Emily reasserts the fact that she is not required to pay taxes in Jefferson and that the officials should talk to Colonel Sartoris about the matter. However, at that point he has been dead for almost a decade. She asks her servant, Tobe, to show the men out. The narrator describes a time thirty years earlier when Emily resists another official inquiry on behalf of the town leaders, when the townspeople detect a powerful odor emanating from her property. Her father has just died, and Emily has been abandoned by the man whom the townsfolk believed Emily was to marry. As complaints mount, Judge Stevens, the mayor at the time, decides to have lime sprinkled along the foundation of the Grierson home in the middle of the night. Within a couple of weeks, the odor subsides, but the townspeople begin to pity the increasingly reclusive Emily, remembering how her great aunt had succumbed to insanity. The townspeople have always believed that the Griersons thought too highly of themselves, with Emily's father driving off the many suitors deemed not good enough to marry his daughter. With no offer of marriage in sight, Emily is still single by the time she turns thirty. The day after Mr. Grierson's death, the women of the town call on Emily to offer their condolences. Meeting them at the door, Emily states that her father is not dead, a charade that she keeps up for three days. She finally turns her father's body over for burial. In section III, the narrator describes a long illness that Emily suffers after this incident. The summer after her father's death, the town contracts workers to pave the sidewalks, and a construction company, under the direction of northerner Homer Barron, is awarded the job. Homer soon becomes a popular figure in town and is seen taking Emily on buggy rides on Sunday afternoons, which scandalizes the town and increases the condescension and pity they have for Emily. They feel that she is forgetting her family pride and becoming involved with a man beneath her station. As the affair continues and Emily's reputation is further compromised, she goes to the drug store to purchase arsenic, a powerful poison. She is required by law to reveal how she will use the arsenic. She offers no explanation, and the package arrives at her house labeled "For rats." In section IV, the narrator describes the fear that some of the townspeople have that Emily will use the poison to kill herself. Her potential marriage to Homer seems increasingly unlikely, despite their continued Sunday ritual. The more outraged women of the town insist that the Baptist minister talk with Emily. After his visit, he never speaks of what happened and swears that he'll never go back. So the minister's wife writes to Emily's two cousins in Alabama, who arrive for an extended stay. Because Emily orders a silver toilet set monogrammed with Homer's initials, talk of the couple's marriage resumes. Homer, absent from town, is believed to be preparing for Emily's move to the North or avoiding Emily's intrusive relatives. After the cousins' departure, Homer enters the Grierson home one evening and then is never seen again. Holed up in the house, Emily grows plump and gray. Despite the occasional lesson she gives in china painting, her door remains closed to outsiders. In what becomes an annual ritual, Emily refuses to acknowledge the tax bill. She eventually closes up the top floor of the house. Except for the occasional glimpse of her in the window, nothing is heard from her until her death at age seventy-four. Only the servant is seen going in and out of the house. In section V, the narrator describes what happens after Emily dies. Emily's body is laid out in the parlor, and the women, town elders, and two cousins attend the service. After some time has passed, the door to a sealed upstairs room that had not been opened in forty years is broken down by the townspeople. The room is frozen in time, with the items for an upcoming wedding and a man's suit laid out. Homer Barron's body is stretched on the bed as well, in an advanced state of decay. The onlookers then notice the indentation of a head in the pillow beside Homer's body and a long strand of Emily's gray hair on the pillow.

In "A Rose for Emily," written by Faulkner, Emily challenges tradition when the town people try to force her to pay taxes and pull her into the modernist world thematically. Also, his story exhibits modernist characteristics structurally throughout the story because Faulkner takes people back in time, using a narrative point of view. Lastly, he uses very long sentences; however, they are grammatically correct. Emily is held to unrealistic standards, she can't have a normal social life, she can't have Homer, etc.

Young Colonel Sartoris Snopes crouches on a keg in the back of the store that doubles for the town court. He cannot see the table where his father and his father's opponent, Mr. Harris, are seated. The justice of the peace asks Mr. Harris for proof that Mr. Snopes burned his barn. Mr. Harris describes the numerous times Snopes's hog broke through the fence and got into his cornfields. The final time, when Mr. Harris demanded a dollar for the animal's return, the black man who was sent to fetch the hog gave Mr. Harris an ominous warning that wood and hay are combustible. Later that night, fire claimed Mr. Harris's barn. While the judge claims that that by itself isn't proof, Mr. Harris has Sartoris called to testify before the court. The boy knows his father is expecting him to lie on his behalf. After doing so, the judge asks Mr. Harris whether he wants the child cross-examined, but Mr. Harris snarls to have the boy removed.The judge dismisses the charges against Snopes but warns him to leave the county for good, and Snopes agrees to comply. Snopes and his two sons then leave the store and head to their wagon. A child in the crowd accuses them of being barn burners and strikes Sartoris, knocking him down. Snopes orders Sartoris into the wagon, which is laden with their possessions and where his two sisters, mother, and aunt are waiting. Snopes prevents his crying wife from cleaning Sartoris's bloodied face. That night, the family camps around the father's typically small fire. Snopes wakes Sartoris and takes him onto the dark road, where he accuses him of planning to inform the judge of his guilt in the arson case. Snopes strikes Sartoris on the head and tells him he must always remain loyal to his family. The next day, the family arrives at its new home and begins unloading the wagon. Snopes takes Sartoris to the house of Major de Spain, the owner on whose land the family will work. Despite the servant's protests, Snopes tracks horse manure into the opulent house, leaving only when Miss Lula asks him to. He resentfully remarks that the home was built by slave labor. Two hours later, the servant drops off the rug that Snopes had soiled and instructs him to clean and return it. Snopes supervises as the two sisters reluctantly clean the carpet with lye, and he uses a jagged stone to work the surface of the expensive rug. After dinner, the family retires to their sleeping areas. Snopes forces Sartoris to fetch the mule and ride along with him to return the cleaned rug. At the house, Snopes flings the rug onto the floor after loudly kicking at the door several times. The next morning, as Sartoris and Snopes prepare the mules for plowing, de Spain arrives on horseback to inform them that the rug was ruined from improper cleaning. In lieu of the hundred-dollar replacement fee, the major says Snopes will be charged twenty additional bushels of corn. Sartoris defends Snopes's actions, telling him that he did the best he could with the soiled carpet and that they will refuse to supply the extra crops. Snopes puts Sartoris back to work, and the following days are consumed with the constant labor of working their acreage. Sartoris hopes that Snopes will turn once and for all from his destructive impulses.The next weekend, Snopes and his two sons head once again to a court appearance at the country store, where the well-dressed de Spain is in attendance. Sartoris attempts to defend Snopes, saying that he never burned the barn, but Snopes orders him back to the wagon. The judge mistakenly thinks the rug was burned in addition to being soiled and destroyed. He rules that Snopes must pay ten extra bushels of corn when the crop comes due, and court is adjourned. After a trip to the blacksmith's shop for wagon repairs, a light meal in front of the general store, and a trip to a corral where horses are displayed and sold, Snopes and his sons return home after sundown. Despite his wife's protests, Snopes empties the kerosene from the lamp back into its five-gallon container and secures a lit candle stub in the neck of a bottle. Snopes orders Sartoris to fetch the oil. He obeys but fantasizes about running away. He tries to dissuade Snopes, but Snopes grabs Sartoris by the collar and orders his wife to restrain him. Sartoris escapes his mother's clutches and runs to the de Spain house, bursting in on the startled servant. Breathlessly, he blurts out the word Barn! Sartoris runs desperately down the road, moving aside as the major's horse comes thundering by him. Three shots ring out and Snope is killed, his plan to burn de Spain's barn thwarted. At midnight, Sartoris sits on a hill. Stiff and cold, he hears the whippoorwills and heads down the hill to the dark woods, not pausing to look back.

In "Barn Burning," also written by Faulkner, he exhibits modernist characteristics throughout his story. The boy is challenging tradition because he is supposed to back up his family; however, he instead steps out and says his father is wrong. Also, Modernist stories often feature non-linear narratives, fragmentation, and internal monologues (such as when we read Sarty's thoughts). In terms of the time frame of the story, "Barn Burning" is linear chronologically. It seems to move from day one to day seven in a straight line through space-time. But this is not quite true. The narrator also inserts pieces or of Sarty's future life, and of Abner's past into the mix, resulting in what is considered a healthy confusion on the part of the reader. Faulkner writes in a sense of "puzzle pieces," which makes it where the readers have to continue reading for it to make sense, which is a characteristic of modernist literature.

Harry, a writer, and his wife, Helen, are stranded while on safari in Africa. A bearing burned out on their truck, and Harry is talking about the gangrene that has infected his leg when he did not apply iodine after he scratched it. As they wait for a rescue plane from Nairobi that he knows won't arrive on time, Harry spends his time drinking and insulting Helen. Harry reviews his life, realizing that he wasted his talent through procrastination and luxury from a marriage to a wealthy woman that he doesn't love. In a series of flashbacks, Harry recalls the mountains of Bulgaria and Constantinople, as well as the suddenly hollow, sick feeling of being alone in Paris. Later, there were Turks, and an American poet talking nonsense about the Dada movement, and headaches and quarrels, and watching people whom he would later write about. Uneasily, he recalls a boy who'd been frozen, his body half-eaten by dogs, and a wounded officer so entangled in a wire fence that his bowels spilled over it. As Harry lies on his cot, he is aware that vultures are walking around his makeshift camp, and a hyena lurks in the shadows. Knowing that he will die before he wakes, Harry goes to sleep and dreams that the rescue plane is taking him to a snow covered summit of Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa. Its Western summit is called the Masai "Ngàje Ngài," the House of God, where he sees the legendary leopard. Helen wakes, and taking a flashlight, walks toward Harry's cot. Seeing that his leg is dangling alongside the cot and that the dressings are pulled down, she calls his name repeatedly. She listens for his breathing and can hear nothing. Outside the tent, the hyena whines — a cry that is strangely human.

"The Snows of Kilimanjaro," written by Hemingway is Modernist writing because it challenged tradition, it is out of order like a puzzle piece, and flashback is used. For example, it challenged tradition because it mentions that the man had once been divorced, his wife takes on a masculine role by going into the safari and killing stuff, and his wife also has all of the money. The structure of the narrative is Modernistic as Hemingway shifts back and forth from the traditional narrative form to the italicized passages that reveal the protagonist's private thoughts and memories. Although the italicized passages are not written in first person or stream of consciousness, they are innovative and effective in exploring the psychology of Harry's inner life, his feelings and memories. Another unusual technique of structure is employed in the story's conclusion as Hemingway moves back and forth between events happening in reality and events happening only in Harry's mind as he approaches death--without distinguishing reality from hallucination. Also, two themes common in Modernism are found in the story: alienation and pessimism. Harry has lived a life of alienation, emotionally distant from his several wives and never identifying with or belonging to the wealthy society in which he has lived, courtesy of his most recent wife's money. As he dies, no spiritual faith sustains him. He has no thoughts of a Supreme Being or an afterlife. He thinks only of all he intended to write but did not write. He worships only the gift he squandered.

Prior to meeting Helen, Harry was relatively poor and had much more inspiration for his writing. Harry sometimes blames Helen, sometimes blames himself. He assumes that his comfortable life with Helen has made him complacent and has dulled his talent for writing. When he becomes sick with gangrene, this anger he has for Helen (justified or not) increases. On trading his old life for a new one with her, "He had traded it for security, for comfort too, there was no denying that, and for what else? He did not know." But it would clearly be wrong to blame Helen for the loss of his talent. Hemingway makes this clear. As he is dying and immobile, Helen goes out shooting. Combine this with the fact that he lived with the comfort of her money, and it is possible that Harry felt emasculated by Helen; but it is his choice to stay with her in this comfortable life. He can blame her, but it is his choice. Hemingway portrays Helen as a genuinely caring person and she becomes more of a mother figure than a lover to Harry, especially when he becomes ill. Harry paints her as a "rich bitch" but one who genuinely cares for him. And Harry seems to envision himself, his life before Helen, as masculine, strong, exciting, and adventurous. However, in the context of the story (in Africa), Harry is weak, cynical, and even cowardly. Helen, on the other hand, remains positive and strong. That may be a bit harsh considering Harry is facing death, but his weakness shows. In this analysis, Helen is the strong one in terms of character. There is also a bit of reversal in terms gender roles. While Harry is basically an invalid, waiting at the tent, Helen goes off hunting. She takes on the typical male role while also becoming like a mother to Harry. Harry crumbles when his traditional male role is gone. Essentially, Helen becomes the dominant one in the relationship.

The Leader of the People: Billy Buck is gathering the last of the year's hay. Jody suggests that he and the dogs ought to chase out the mice that are no doubt inhabiting it. Carl Tiflin appears on the ridge, a letter in hand. It is from Jody's grandfather, on his mother's side. His mother reads it; Jody's grandfather is traveling from Monterey to stay for a while. Jody's father is angry, and complains that all the grandfather does is talk. He and Jody's mother are about to quarrel, and Jody is sent out from the house, although he continues to listen from the window. Carl complains that the grandfather does nothing but complain about how when he was leading a wagon train across the Great Plains, Indians chased off their horses. Jody's mother retorts that crossing the plains was the one big thing in her father's life. Jody's father is frustrated and walks out of the house. Jody quickly sets about his chores. Jody walks up the road to meet his grandfather, who is coming that day—the letter was late in arriving. Eventually, he sees a cart. He waits for a while then runs toward it once it's close, slowing to a more dignified walk at the last moment. His grandfather is walking, leading the horse, stepping with gravity, and wearing old fashion clothes. Jody immediately asks him to help with the mouse hunt he's planning for the haystack. The family comes out to meet the grandfather. Billy in particular respects the grandfather, as the grandfather respects him for being one of the few of the "younger generation" that has not gone soft.

In Steinbeck's, "The Leader of the People," Steinbeck exhibits characteristics of Modernist writing. Jody, the young boy, represents the modern age. Also, his dad Carl does too. Grandpa represents the previous generation. Jody loves hearing grandpa's stories about the Westernization and wagon crossing. However, Carl is sick of hearing of it. Steinbeck uses the mouse hunt to ridicule the modern generation in two ways. First, the modern people don't do grand things anymore. Now they concern themselves with petty things that aren't challenging, represented by the mouse hunt. Second, Steinbeck ridicules the white settlers who, upon arriving in the West, brutally killed innocent Native Americans. Steinbeck implies there was no heroism or bravery in that conduct. The fighting Grandfather had done against Indians had been in self-defense, but those who cruelly attacked Indian settlements were killing people who were as defenseless as Jody's mice.

A process by which members of an ethnic minority group lose cultural characteristics that distinguish them from the dominant cultural group or take on the cultural characteristics of another group.

The narrator — speaking in the voice of a man in his 40s — reminiscing about his youth, opens the novel. He remembers when he had not yet discovered his identity or realized that he was an invisible man. The narrator relates an anecdote concerning his grandfather who, on his deathbed, shocks his family by revealing himself as a traitor and a spy (to his race). The narrator also recalls being invited to give his high school graduation speech at a gathering of the town's leading white citizens. When he arrived, he discovered that he was to provide part of the evening's entertainment for a roomful of drunken white men as a contestant, along with nine of his classmates, in a blindfolded boxing match (a "battle royal") before giving his speech. The entertainment includes an erotic dance by a naked blonde woman with a flag tattoo on her stomach, which he and his classmates are forced to watch. After enduring these humiliating experiences, the narrator is finally permitted to give his speech and receives his prize: a calfskin briefcase that contains a scholarship to the local college for Negroes (a term Ellison preferred over "blacks"). That night, the narrator dreams that he is at the circus with his grandfather, who refuses to laugh at the clowns. His grandfather orders him to open the briefcase and read the message contained in an official envelope stamped with the state seal. Opening the envelope, the narrator finds that each envelope contains yet another envelope. In the last envelope, instead of the scholarship, he finds an engraved document with the message: "To Whom It May Concern: Keep This ******-Boy Running."

This poem, though published in the early 1960s, is a throwback to 1930s Chicago. The word "kitchenette" was a term for houses and apartments that had been chopped up into even smaller units. This was the start of discriminatory housing practices and unofficial segregation aimed at African-American families in inner-city Chicago. These cramped kitchenette buildings were usually run by predatory landlords and kept in poor condition. The kitchenettes were often just one small room, and bathrooms and kitchens were shared with several other families.

Mrs. Freeman and Mrs. Hopewell take care of "important business" every morning over breakfast. Mrs. Hopewell gets up at 7:00 AM and lights the heaters—hers and her daughter Joy's—and then she gets to gossiping in the kitchen with Mrs. Freeman. Joy, who is thirty-two years old and extremely educated, takes her time coming in. Mrs. Freeman has two teenage daughters, one married and pregnant, and one not; the girls are a big topic of morning conversation. Mrs. Hopewell employs the Freemans, a tenant farming family—she's done so for the past four years—and they've worked out well because they are not "trash," but rather "good country people". Ahem... did you notice that title reference? Because that totally just happened. Anyway, before the Freemans, a year was about the most a family stayed working for Mrs. Hopewell. Joy has a grumpy attitude, but Mrs. Hopewell lets her get by with it because she has a wooden leg. When she was ten, her leg was "shot off in a hunting accident", which sounds like a major bummer to us. Joy legally changed her name to Hulga when she was twenty-one, but Mrs. Hopewell doesn't call her that. Moms, right? Hulga has a doctoral degree in philosophy but lives at home because she has a heart condition and needs to be cared for by her mother. She might only live another ten years or so. Today (Saturday) Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman are wondering what Hulga talked about with the Bible salesman who came by yesterday; apparently Hulga is an atheist. Manley Pointer, the Bible salesman, wasn't able to sell Mrs. Hopewell a Bible, but he did get lunch, some conversation, and a date for today at 10:00 AM with Hulga out of his visit. Hulga and Manley meet up and begin walking in the woods. They kiss, and talk about God, damnation, nothingness, and Hulga's leg. Hulga thinks he's not nearly as smart as she is. When Manley suggests they find a place to "sit down", Hulga leads him to the barn loft. Manley kisses her more and takes away her glasses. She doesn't notice. He tells her he loves her and wants her to tell him the same in return. He also wants to see where her false leg attaches to her real one. She succumbs, reluctantly at first, to both requests. After Manley removes her leg, he refuses to give it back to her. She panics. Manley open his Bible—and guess what? It's hollow inside. From the hollow, he removes whiskey, cards, and condoms. Hulga is not impressed. She demands her leg and loses all romantic spirit. Manley packs up his things... as well as Hulga's leg. He tells Hulga that he is just as smart as she is and suggests that he completely fooled her: He is an even bigger believer in nothing than she is. Through the loft opening, Hulga watches Manley leave. Her face is agitated. Mrs. Hopewell and Mrs. Freeman watch him leave, too. Mrs. Hopewell thinks he was selling Bibles to the black people who live in the direction from which he came. It's not clear what Mrs. Freeman thinks, but she gets the last word in the story.

Kingston learns from her mother that she once had an aunt who killed herself and her newborn baby by jumping into the family well in China. The woman's husband had left the country years before, so the villagers knew that the child was illegitimate. The night that the baby was born, the villagers raided and destroyed the family house, and the woman gave birth in a pigsty. The next morning the mother found her sister-in-law and the baby plugging up the well. The woman had brought such disgrace upon her family that they decided to pretend that she had never been born. Kingston's mother tells her the story as a cautionary tale, in the years Kingston begins to menstruate. Her mother warns her to be careful lest the same fate fall upon her. Kingston, looking back on the story later, thinks about the world in which she was raised, an "invisible world" of ghosts transposed from Chinese rural life into the emigrants' new homes in America. Because Kingston cannot ask about her unnamed aunt—who is referred to only as "No-Name Woman"—she invents her own fantasies about why her aunt gave in to her forbidden passions. In one such scenario, her aunt is a timid woman ordered into submission by a rapist. In another, her aunt harbors a slowly blossoming passion, attempting to attract a man's attention by carefully tending to her appearance. Kingston's fantasies must have direct bearing on her own life: she rejects, for example, the idea that her aunt was a wild woman of loose morals. Instead, her aunt's greatest crime—one with which Kingston identifies—was acting on her private interests, stepping out of the role Chinese society and traditions had proscribed for her. Such traditions, Kingston says, were thought of as necessary to ensure village stability, especially when the villagers were all related in some way. Any sexual passion could lead to adultery or incest and therefore threatened the social order. In a particularly vivid section of the chapter, Kingston imagines the time when her aunt's family casts her aunt out. Alone, her aunt is lost in the wilderness, and when the baby comes, she resorts to giving birth in a pigsty. Kingston believes that her aunt decides to kill herself and her baby together in order to spare the child a life without family or purpose. Kingston also notes that the baby was probably a girl, and as such would already have been considered practically useless to society—a theme that reappears throughout The Woman Warrior. At the end of the chapter, Kingston imagines her aunt as a lonely, wandering ghost, begging for scraps from the gifts given other ghosts by their loving relatives.

Men are conspicuously, intentionally absent from The Woman Warrior. Each chapter focuses on a woman that affects Kingston's life, and in most cases depicts how that woman relates to the male-dominated society around her. However, it is often not the men themselves who are most oppressive in the memoir, but rather the power of tradition as carried through women. It is women who utter phrases like "better to have geese than girls" to Kingston, women who are pictured destroying the house of No-Name Woman, girls who torment each other on the playground in the final chapter. The subtext of Kingston's relationship with her mother—and her mother's talk-stories in particular—is both empowerment and disempowerment. Her mother tells her stories of female swordswomen and shamans, and is herself an accomplished, intelligent doctor, but she also reinforces the notion that girls are disappointments to their parents, despite what they may accomplish. As a little girl, Kingston feels haunted by the images or ghosts of little Chinese girls whose parents left them to die because they wanted sons instead.

: After the Allies win the war, Sergeant Nathan Marx is rotated back to the states to become Sergeant at Camp Crowder, Missouri. The character Grossbart who is Jewish, learns that the new Sergeant is Jewish as well. Grossbart starts to ask Marx for favors and plays with his sympathies such as being excused from the "GI party" on Friday nights as it part of the Jewish religion to go to shul (church). Marx's is uncomfortable about this, but Grossbart is very persuasive on his own, but he also uses Fishbein and Halpern to be even more persuasive. One favor after another, Sergeant Marx gets more and more frustrated. An example of when Grossbart asked a favor out of Marx, which was the breaking point was when Grossbart begged him to leave for the weekend to see his Aunt. Grossbart came back to the camp after the weekend had passed telling Marx that his aunt was not home and that he read the invite incorrectly. All in all, a letter came that stated every soldier was to be sent to Came Stoneman in California, all but one. All the soldiers except Grossbart. Grossbart was going to be sent east to New Jersey.

The story begins with Ayah, a Native American woman, leaning against a tree near a stream. She thinks first about her mother weaving on a loom and her grandmother spinning wool into yarn. They are also both present at the birth of her first son, Jimmie. The tragic events in Ayah's life usually involve a white authority figure. She remembers when a white man came to tell her that Jimmie died in a helicopter crash during the war. Her husband, Chato, translated the news for her. Later, white doctors take away her other two children because of an alleged disease. They visit later, and it is obvious that her children are forgetting their Native American culture. Chato is also exploited by the white rancher who employs him. Chato and Ayah eventually begin receiving federal assistance checks. Chato cashes these to go drinking at a local bar. As the story catches up to the present time, Ayah is on her way to look for Chato at the bar. He is not inside, instead she finds him walking home in the snow. They stop to rest on the way home, and Chato lies down in the snow. She realizes that he is dying and sings to him the lullaby her grandmother had sung.

Cisneros describes the experiences of an ideal Mexican wife, Cleófilas. Having grown up with her father, six brothers, and no mother, Cleófilas learns how to be a woman by watching telenovelas on television. She learns to expect that passion will fill her life. This passion will be the great love of her life, which will give it direction and meaning, so that "one does whatever one can, must do, at whatever the cost." This, she believes, is how life should be, "because to suffer for love is good. The pain all sweet somehow. In the end." To be complete as a woman, she need only wait for her lover to appear and carry her away into "happy ever after." Her husband, Juan, carries her away from Mexico to Seguin, Texas, where she finds no community or family to support her, living in a comparatively isolated home and without independent means of transportation. Aware of the role of a good wife, she learns how to fit gracefully in with Juan's life. She cares for his house and bears a son, Juan Pedrito. Both she and Juan, however, are foreigners in Seguin. His work is menial and does not pay well enough for the minimum standard of life in Texas. By the time she is pregnant with their second child, he has taken to beating her regularly, partly as a way of dealing with his frustration and powerlessness. As their relationship deteriorates, Cleófilas comes to realize that this marriage does not work. She goes to the doctor and the doctor realizes she has marks all over her and has been abused. She needs to go back to Mexico and her doctor gets her a ride with Felice. Felice was a woman who drove a truck, hollered, and cursed like a man. She paid for her truck by herself. She was not the stereotypical woman.

Louise Erdrich's poem "Dear John Wayne," like much of her work, reflects her Native American heritage and upbringing in small towns in Minnesota and North Dakota where prejudices regarding Native Americans sometimes ran deep. While perhaps unfair to the memory of the actor, and for a generation the predominant symbol of male virility on the Big Screen, John Wayne, whose roles and off-screen views were actually fairly sympathetic to Native Americans, Erdrich's poem is nevertheless an apt indictment of the racial biases that were prevalent in American culture for hundreds of years. As "Dear John Wayne" begins, the narrator and another person - a boyfriend, perhaps - are at a drive-in theater viewing a Western, the genre that most prominently featured Wayne, and that too-often demonized the indigenous populations that settled North America well-ahead of the Europeans. The narrator's description of the action on the large screen leaves little question as to the lens through which Erdrich viewed society. And, then, to mass applause from the overwhelmingly Caucasian audience, the larger-than-live visage of John Wayne fills the screen - the moral and physical symbol of white superiority. The idea of John Wayne serves as a metaphor for the dehumanization of Native Americans and their depiction in American culture as slovenly, drunken, thieves bent on the rape and pillaging of white people. For Erdrich's characters, even the ubiquitous and relentless mosquitos represent the devastation of Native culture, as when her narrator, in the poem's opening stanza, references the "hordes of mosquitos" intent on breaking "through the smoke screen for blood."

A poem by Louise Erdrich describing a traumatic flood experienced by a young girl and her grandfather. A big storm knocked down all the trees in the past. A child and his grandfather walked by where the storm hit. The flood is a metaphor for the westward expansion of America and the trees represent the Native Americans. Many Native Americans were converted to Christianity and were "civilized". In early America as many people headed West for better opportunities Native Americans were also pushed further and further west. The trees that were swallowed by the flood "until their life-hold was broken" represent the people and how their land was taken and their resources taken until they died, moved, or were taken into American culture. In the third stanza the sentence that says, that after "the long removal, they had all become the same dry wood" reminds me of the Trail of Tears and the removal of many Indian tribes.

"Fleur" begins by stating that Fleur Pillager was only a girl when she drowned in Lake Turcot, which is located in Native American reservation in North Dakota. Two men dive in and save her and, not long afterward, both disappear. Fleur falls in the lake again when she is twenty, but no one is willing to touch her. One man bends towards her when she washes onshore, and Fleur curses him, telling him that he will die instead of her. He drowns shortly thereafter in a bathtub. Men stay away from Fleur, believing that she is dangerous and that the water monster Misshepeshu wants her for himself. Because she practices what the narrator calls "evil" ways, Fleur is unpopular on the reservation, and some gather to throw her out. In the summer of 1920, she leaves on her own accord for the town of Argus. Noticing a steeple, she walks straight to the church and asks the priest for work. He sends her to a butcher shop where Fleur works with the owner's wife Fritzie, hauling packages of meat to a locker. Fleur gives the men a new topic of conversation, particularly when she begins playing cards with them. Pulling up a chair without being invited, she asks if she can join their game of cards. Fleur borrows eight cents from the narrator Pauline and begins to win. The men unsuccessfully try to rattle her, and Tor discovers that she is unable to bluff, but Fleur continues to win. Fleur finally picks up Pauline, who is hiding in the walls, and puts her to bed. The game continues night after night, and each time Fleur wins exactly one dollar. The men are soon "lit with suspense" and ask Pete to join the game. Lily is confounded by Fleur and suspects that she may be cheating for low stakes. In August, when Fleur has won thirty dollars, Pete and Fritzie leave for Minnesota. With Pete out of the way, Lily raises the stakes in an attempt to shake Fleur. After a long night of going up and down, Fleur wins the entire pot and then leaves the game. The men begin drinking whiskey straight from the bottle and go outside to hide in wait for Fleur. Lily attempts to grab her, but she douses him with a bucket of hog slops and runs into the yard. Lily falls into the sow's pen, and the sow attacks him. He beats its head against a post and eventually escapes to chase Fleur to the smokehouse with the other men. They catch Fleur, who cries out Pauline's name, but Pauline cannot bring herself to help. The next morning, the weather begins to turn into a violent storm and the men take shelter in the meat locker. Pauline goes to the doors and slams down the iron bar to lock them inside. The winds pick up and send Pauline flying through the air, and Argus is thoroughly wrecked by the storm. Because everyone is occupied with digging out from the storm, days pass before the townspeople notice that three men are missing. Kozka's Meats has been nearly destroyed, although Fritzie and Pete come home to find that the back rooms where they live are undisturbed. They dig out the meat locker to discover the three men and Lily's dog frozen to death. Pauline says as a kind of summary, from an unspecified period of time in the future, that "Power travels in bloodlines, handed out before birth," which implies that Fleur was responsible for the deaths of the men. She says that now she is about the only one who visits Fleur, who lives on Lake Turcot and may have married the water spirit Misshepeshu or taken up with white men or "windigos" (evil demons), unless she has "killed them all." Fleur has had a child, but no one knows for sure who fathered it. Pauline emphasizes that old men talk about the story over and over but, in the end, "only know that they don't know anything."

In his poem At Navajo Monument Valley Tribal School, Alexie connects a very traditional American sport to Navajo tribal traditions, creating a juxtaposition that somehow works. By using an animal metaphor regularly throughout the poem, Alexie keeps with native tradition, but by blending that metaphor with football or track or cheer-leading, he makes it seem to be "American" in a very relevant and relatable way. Though he views the life and energy and freedom of football to be comparable to that of the native spirit, the poem creates an image of normality and commonality wherein the borders on the definition of the term "American" are blurred. Being native, playing football, running track, it's all American. It's all intertwined and related and we're all just simply American by principle, it's not a strict definition.

"Pawn Shop" compares the Indians to second-hand goods. The speaker goes to a bar and realizes that all of the Indians are nowhere to be found. First, he searches storefronts, streets, and other public venues but fails to find them. It is not until he goes into a pawnshop that he finds a heart (symbolizing Indian spirit), hiding under a glass. Using these details, the story demonstrates how Indian culture seems insignificant when compared to modern culture and society. The Indians traded their heart and soul in Westernization. The Native Americans have lost everything that matters.

Miranda is a young woman who works in fundraising for a public radio station in Boston. Her coworker Laxmi, already married and settled despite being only a few years older than Miranda, alerts Miranda to a personal disaster. Her cousin's husband had a life-changing conversation on an airplane and has left his family. Laxmi doesn't blame her cousin for taking to bed, but her grief has made her unable to care for her son. Usually, Laxmi doesn't need to tell Miranda family gossip, as Miranda can hear Laxmi's phone calls through her cubicle. Today, however, Miranda is engrossed in her own phone call. She talks with her married lover Dev. Laxmi's nephew is a genius and part Bengali, like Dev. At first Miranda thought it was a religion, but Dev pointed out the West Bengal state on a map of India. He brought the map, printed in an issue of the Economist, to show where his father had been born. When she asks about the article it appears in, he taps her playfully on the head with the magazine. He says it's nothing she'll ever need to worry about. But later, when he leaves, she pulls the article from the trash and looks for photos of where Dev was born. They met a week before at a makeup counter in a department store in Boston. As she paused to smell a fragrance card, her eyes found Dev, an elegant man, purchasing toiletries for a woman. Miranda engages a saleswoman so she can stay near to Dev. He watches her as the woman applies cream to her face. She tries to place his accent, guessing he is Lebanese or Spanish. They meet at the exit and Miranda inquiries about the creams. They are for his wife - who will be leaving for India for a few weeks. Those few weeks, Miranda and Dev spend nearly every night together at her apartment. Dev races back to his home in the suburbs in the early mornings for a pre-arranged daily phone call with his traveling wife. He calls frequently, leaving his voice on her answering machine. He is charmed by her tiny apartment, and her bravery in moving to a city where she knows no one, and also by her long legs. Miranda and Dev both admit to their loneliness and Miranda thinks he understands her. Dev is the first man she has dated who is thoughtful, romantic, and chivalrous. Miranda keeps Dev a secret, only occasionally wanting to tell Laxmi. Dev shows Miranda his favorite parts of Boston, including the Mapparium - a domed building with a room that looks like you are standing inside a globe, with glowing stained glass panels that look like the outside of a globe. Dev's voice echoes alluringly as he shows her details of the world. The acoustics make each sound feel as if a whisper in her ear. He stands across the room from her and whispers into the corner of a wall. She feels his voice under her skin. She says "Hi," and he responds, "You're sexy." It was the first time she'd been told she was sexy. Hearing his voice in her head, Miranda goes back to the department store and buys clothes she thinks a mistress should have - seamed stockings, black heels, a black slip, and a silver cocktail dress. She imagines wearing the ensemble at dinner with Dev. But when his wife returns, he appears at Miranda's in gym clothes, having told his wife he was out running. The lingerie remains unworn at the back of her drawer, and the silver dress often slips off its hanger and falls to the floor of her closet. But the affair continues. Dev shares more about his life and asks Miranda about her own. He takes naps during their trysts, accustomed to taking them during hot summers as a boy. Miranda doesn't sleep, but studies his body during, what Dev calls, "the best twelve minutes of the week." After waking up, he goes home to his wife. Miranda recalls the Dixits, an Indian family who moved into her neighborhood when she was a child. Her peers would make fun of their name and frown upon their differences. Miranda went over to their house once for the daughter's birthday and was so frightened by a painting of the fierce goddess Kali that she never returned. Now, Miranda is ashamed of her behavior. When not with Dev, she walks to an Indian restaurant and tries to remember Hindi phrases from the bottom of the menu. She even tries to learn how to write her name in Bengali. Miranda's boredom wanes during the week, but her guilt rears its head when Laxmi talks about her cousin. On Sundays, Dev would come. She asks him what his wife looks like and he responds that she looks like an actress, Madhuri Dixit. For a moment, Miranda's heart stops. She knows she could not be the girl from her childhood, but it still spooks her. Miranda finds her way to an Indian grocery that rents videos, on the hunt to find out what Madhuri Dixit looks like. A Bollywood video plays in the deli, and she knows she must look like one of those women. Beautiful. Miranda notices a snack that Laxmi eats and the grocer tells her it's too spicy for her. Laxmi's cousin comes to Boston to get away from her drama. Laxmi treats her to a spa day, asking Miranda to babysit the cousin's son for the day. Rohin comes to Miranda's apartment with a backpack full of books and a sketchpad. For a boy of 7, he looks haggard and weary. Rohin demands Miranda quiz him on world capitals, as he is having a competition with another student to memorize them all. He announces he will win. He is precocious and makes more demands of Miranda throughout the afternoon. For coffee, to watch cartoons, to look through her toiletries and to draw a picture of their day together. He says, with a precision that startles Miranda, that they will never see each other again. Rohin drags himself to her room and starts going through her closet, finding the silver dress on the floor. Rohin asks that she put it on. Miranda knows she will never wear it on a date with Dev. Now that his wife is back in town, she is nothing but a mistress. She makes Rohin wait outside, latching the door to make sure, while she changes. His eyes open wide when he sees her. Rohin tells her she's sexy. After her heart skips a beat, Miranda asks him what it means. The boy blushes and finally admits that it means loving someone you don't know. His father had sat down next to someone sexy on a plane and now loves her instead of his mother. Miranda goes numb. Rohin curls up for a nap and Miranda takes the dress off. Back in her jeans, she lies down next to the boy and imagines the arguments his parents must have had. Thinking about her own situation, she begins to cry. When she wakes up, Rohin is holding the issue of the Economist. He asks who Devjit Mitra is. Miranda doesn't know what to say. The next time Dev calls, she tells him not to come. She asks him what he said to her in the Mapparium, but he answers incorrectly. The following Sunday, it snows. The Sunday after that, Miranda makes plans with Laxmi and he doesn't ask her to cancel. The third Sunday, she walks alone to the Mapparium and studies the city.

His coming-of-age also addresses the issue of homosexuality, when Yunior refuses to see an old friend, Beto. Yunior used to engage in homosexual activities with the guy, but does not know how he feels about this period in his life, and so avoids the old friend. As such, he is not able to come to terms with this part of himself. Likewise, as he finishes high school, Yunior comes to understand that the boys in his neighborhood are being exploited by the army recruiter, who is looking for people with little to no talent. Yunior also avoids the army officer. As such, Yunior does not want to get involved with the part of his life where he and Beto stole things and acted out, and he does not want to be exploited and acknowledge failure by giving in to the army recruiter.

The narrator begins her journal by marveling at the grandeur of the house and grounds her husband has taken for their summer vacation. She describes it in romantic terms as an aristocratic estate or even a haunted house and wonders how they were able to afford it, and why the house had been empty for so long. Her feeling that there is "something queer" about the situation leads her into a discussion of her illness—she is suffering from "nervous depression"—and of her marriage. She complains that her husband John, who is also her doctor, belittles both her illness and her thoughts and concerns in general. She contrasts his practical, rationalistic manner with her own imaginative, sensitive ways. Her treatment requires that she do almost nothing active, and she is especially forbidden from working and writing. She feels that activity, freedom, and interesting work would help her condition and reveals that she has begun her secret journal in order to "relieve her mind." In an attempt to do so, the narrator begins describing the house. Her description is mostly positive, but disturbing elements such as the "rings and things" in the bedroom walls, and the bars on the windows, keep showing up. She is particularly disturbed by the yellow wallpaper in the bedroom, with its strange, formless pattern, and describes it as "revolting." Soon, however, her thoughts are interrupted by John's approach, and she is forced to stop writing. As the first few weeks of the summer pass, the narrator becomes good at hiding her journal, and thus hiding her true thoughts from John. She continues to long for more stimulating company and activity, and she complains again about John's patronizing, controlling ways—although she immediately returns to the wallpaper, which begins to seem not only ugly, but oddly menacing. She mentions that John is worried about her becoming fixated on it, and that he has even refused to repaper the room so as not to give in to her neurotic worries. The narrator's imagination, however, has been aroused. She mentions that she enjoys picturing people on the walkways around the house and that John always discourages such fantasies. She also thinks back to her childhood, when she was able to work herself into a terror by imagining things in the dark. As she describes the bedroom, which she says must have been a nursery for young children, she points out that the paper is torn off the wall in spots, there are scratches and gouges in the floor, and the furniture is heavy and fixed in place. Just as she begins to see a strange sub-pattern behind the main design of the wallpaper, her writing is interrupted again, this time by John's sister, Jennie, who is acting as housekeeper and nurse for the narrator. As the Fourth of July passes, the narrator reports that her family has just visited, leaving her more tired than ever. John threatens to send her to Weir Mitchell, the real-life physician under whose care Gilman had a nervous breakdown. The narrator is alone most of the time and says that she has become almost fond of the wallpaper and that attempting to figure out its pattern has become her primary entertainment. As her obsession grows, the sub-pattern of the wallpaper becomes clearer. It begins to resemble a woman "stooping down and creeping" behind the main pattern, which looks like the bars of a cage. Whenever the narrator tries to discuss leaving the house, John makes light of her concerns, effectively silencing her. Each time he does so, her disgusted fascination with the paper grows. Soon the wallpaper dominates the narrator's imagination. She becomes possessive and secretive, hiding her interest in the paper and making sure no one else examines it so that she can "find it out" on her own. At one point, she startles Jennie, who had been touching the wallpaper and who mentions that she had found yellow stains on their clothes. Mistaking the narrator's fixation for tranquility, John thinks she is improving. But she sleeps less and less and is convinced that she can smell the paper all over the house, even outside. She discovers a strange smudge mark on the paper, running all around the room, as if it had been rubbed by someone crawling against the wall. The sub-pattern now clearly resembles a woman who is trying to get out from behind the main pattern. The narrator sees her shaking the bars at night and creeping around during the day, when the woman is able to escape briefly. The narrator mentions that she, too, creeps around at times. She suspects that John and Jennie are aware of her obsession, and she resolves to destroy the paper once and for all, peeling much of it off during the night. The next day she manages to be alone and goes into something of a frenzy, biting and tearing at the paper in order to free the trapped woman, whom she sees struggling from inside the pattern. By the end, the narrator is hopelessly insane, convinced that there are many creeping women around and that she herself has come out of the wallpaper—that she herself is the trapped woman. She creeps endlessly around the room, smudging the wallpaper as she goes. When John breaks into the locked room and sees the full horror of the situation, he faints in the doorway, so that the narrator has "to creep over him every time!"

In "The Souls of Black Folk," W. E. B Du Bois declares that the color divide is the biggest problem of the Twentieth Century. He draws on personal experiences to explore how racism has affected his life and the lives of other African Americans. He calls for change in the United States. Du Bois writes of his adolescence in the Jim Crow South. He went to school in Nashville, Tennessee, where segregation created a sharp divide between whites and blacks. Du Bois relates the horrific story of how his only son, Burghardt, died after being refused medical treatment because of the color of his skin. Du Bois calls for change in America, praising the ideas of Booker T. Washington, another prominent African American leader. He argues that gradual change will be effective in the long run.

Broadly defined as "the faithful representation of reality" or "verisimilitude," realism is a literary technique practiced by many schools of writing. Although strictly speaking, realism is a technique, it also denotes a particular kind of subject matter, especially the representation of middle-class life. The use of regionalism is popular, which: Captures specific groups of people, local customs, language, dialect, etc.

An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Europe in the late 1700s and characterized by a heightened interest in nature, emphasis on the individual's expression of emotion and imagination, departure from the attitudes and forms of classicism, and rebellion against established social rules and conventions. Pre Civil War Focus on Nature Emphasis on the Emotional rather than the Rational Supernatural Elements Individualism Primitivism: The Noble Savage

Editha (Responses to the Civil War)

An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge (Responses to the Civil War)

From Impressions of an Indian Childhood & The Soft Hearted Sioux (Native American Voices)

The Goophered Grapevine & The Wife of His Youth (African American Voices)

A Sweat Shop Romance (Immigrant Voices)

Miss Spring Fragrance (Immigrant Voices)

Desiree's Baby, The Story of an Hour, At the Cadian Ball, The Storm (Women's Voices)

A New England Nun (Women's Voices)

Editha, a young girl believes that her boyfriend is not a real 'man' unless he goes to fight for his country. The fact that George does not seem to take anything very seriously infuriates Editha, and she virtually bullies him into enlisting in the army when war is declared. He is among the first wave of soldiers killed, and Editha quite properly wears black out of respect (but with a great deal of pride, also), and goes to visit George's mother. Mrs. Gearson lashes out at Editha, telling her, 'I suppose you would have been glad to die, such a brave person as you! I don't believe he was glad to die. He was always a timid boy, that way; he was afraid of a good many things; but if he was afraid he did what he made up his mind to. I suppose he made up his mind to go, but I knew what it cost him by what it cost me when I heard of it. I had been through one war before. When you sent him you didn't expect he would get killed. No, Editha hadn't. No one ever expects the glorious soldiers to come back the glorious dead. But Mrs. Gearson isn't through: 'You just expected him to kill someone else, some of those foreigners, that weren't there because they had any say about it, but because they had to be there, poor wretches -- conscripts, or whatever they call 'em. You thought it would be all right for my George, your George, to kill the sons of those miserable mothers and the husbands of those girls that you would never see the faces of.' The woman lifted her powerful voice in a psalmlike note. 'I thank my God he didn't live to do it! I thank my God they killed him first, and that he ain't livin' with their blood on his hands!'' (Focused on the Spanish-American War)

"An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge" is divided into three sections. In section I, Peyton Farquhar is standing on a railroad bridge, twenty feet above the water. His wrists are bound behind his back, and around his neck is a noose that is tied to a beam overhead. He is positioned on loose planks that have been laid over the crossties of the train tracks to create a makeshift platform. Two soldiers from the Northern army, a sergeant, and a captain immediately surround him, awaiting the execution. Beyond them, armed sentinels stand at attention. The bridge is bordered on one side by forest and, across the stream, open ground that gives way to a small hillock on which a small fort has been erected. A motionless company of infantrymen, led by their lieutenant, stands assembled before the fort. As the two soldiers finalize the preparations, they step back and remove the individual planks on which they had been standing. The sergeant salutes the captain then positions himself on the opposite end of the board supporting Farquhar, as the captain, like the soldiers, steps off and away from the crossties. Awaiting the captain's signal, the sergeant is about to likewise step away, sending Farquhar to dangle from the bridge's edge. Farquhar stares into the swirling water below. He watches a piece of driftwood being carried downstream and notes how sluggish the stream seems to be. He shuts his eyes to push away the distractions of his present situation and focus more intently on thoughts of his wife and children. He suddenly hears a sharp, metallic ringing, which sounds both distant and close by. The sound turns out to be the ticking of his watch. Opening his eyes and peering again into the water, Farquhar imagines freeing his hands, removing the noose, and plunging into the stream, swimming to freedom and his home, safely located outside enemy lines. These thoughts have barely registered in Farquhar's mind when the captain nods to the sergeant and the sergeant steps away from the board. In section II, we learn that Farquhar was a successful planter, ardently devoted to the Southern cause. Unable to join the Confederate army, he yearned to help the South's war effort in some significant way. One evening in the past, Farquhar and his wife were sitting on the edge of their property when a gray-clad soldier rode up, seeking a drink of water. The soldier appeared to be from the Confederate army. While his wife was fetching the water, Farquhar asked for news of the front and was informed that Northern forces had repaired the railroads in anticipation of launching another advance, having already reached the Owl Creek bridge. Any civilian caught interfering with the North's efforts in the area, the soldier went on to reveal, would be hanged. Farquhar asked how a civilian could attempt some form of sabotage. The soldier told him that one could easily set fire to the driftwood that had piled up near the bridge after the past winter's flood. The man, who was actually a Northern scout in disguise, finished his drink and rode off, only to pass by an hour later heading in the opposite direction. Section III brings us back to the present, at the hanging. Farquhar loses consciousness as he plummets down from the side of the bridge. He is awakened by currents of pain running through his body. A loud splash wakes him up even more abruptly, and he realizes that the noose has broken—sending him falling into the stream below. Farquhar sees a light flicker and fade before it strengthens and brightens as he rises, with some trepidation, to the surface. He is afraid he will be shot by Northern soldiers as soon as he is spotted in the water. Freeing his bound hands, then lifting the noose from his neck, he fights extreme pain to break through the surface and take a large gasp of air, which he exhales with a shriek. Farquhar looks back to see his executioners standing on the bridge, in silhouette against the sky. One of the sentinels fires his rifle at him twice. Farquhar can see the gray eye of the marksman through the gun's sights. Farquhar then hears the lieutenant instructing his men to fire, so he dives down to avoid the shots. He quickly removes a piece of metal that sticks in his neck. Farquhar comes back up for air as the soldiers reload, and the sentinels fire again from the bridge. Swimming with the current, Farquhar realizes that a barrage of gunfire is about to come his way. A cannonball lands two yards away, sending a sheet of spray crashing over him. The deflected shot goes smashing into the trees beyond. Farquhar believes they will next fire a spray of grapeshot from the cannon, instead of a single ball, and he will have to anticipate the firing. Suddenly he is spun into a disorienting whirl, then ejected from the river onto a gravelly bank out of sight and range of his would-be executioners and their gunfire. He weeps with joy and marvels at the landscape, having no desire to put any more distance between him and his pursuers, when a volley of grapeshot overhead rouses him. He heads into the forest, setting his path by the sun and traveling the entire day. The thought of his family urges him on. Taking a remote road, he finds himself in the early morning standing at the gate of his home. As he walks toward the house, his wife steps down from the verandah to meet him. He moves to embrace her but feels a sharp blow on the back of his neck and sees a blinding white light all about him. Then silence and darkness engulf him. Farquhar is dead, his broken body actually swinging from the side of the Owl Creek bridge.

By invoking the gritty details of an enemy's execution, Bierce participates in a realist tradition that helped to transform popular conceptions of war. He takes his place among other writers, artists, and photographers of the era who did not romanticize or avoid the war's horrific nature. Instead, they presented shockingly detailed portrayals of violence and death.

Zitkala-Sa explains the significant bond between Native American mothers and daughters in "Impressions of an Indian Childhood." It is important to note that the first stories in Zitkala-Sa's collection, American Indian Stories, are autobiographical. Zitkala-Sa was a member of the Yankton Sioux tribe. As recounted in "Impressions of an Indian Childhood," Zitkala-Sa leaves the tribe at age eight to attend a missionary school for formal education. The Sioux believed that knowing one's mother was necessary for knowing your personal relationship with the earth. Zitkala-sa's admiration and respect for her mother are apparent when she describes how, when her mother would walk to the river to get water each day, she "stopped...play to run along with her" (7). She also explains how she and her playmates "delighted in impersonating our own mothers" in the games that they played (11). Zitkala-Sa's mother is open about her hatred for white men. One example of this is when she makes a comment about the white man stealing the river from them some day. When her daughter shows an interest in leaving the tribe to attend the white school, her mother begs Zitkala-Sa not to go. Zitkala-Sa does not want to leave her mother, but she is too interested in the stories she has heard about life beyond her tribe. Even though she is only eight years old, Zitkala-Sa's mother allows her to make her own decision. This is an important aspect of the mother-daughter relationship. Zitkala-Sa's mother has taught her not to be an intrusion on others. By allowing Zitkala-Sa to make her own decision, her mother is not intruding on her daughter's life. Zitkala-Sa is described as wild and free, and her mother fears she will lose this if she goes to the school. Part of Native American tradition is the passing down of knowledge from mother to daughter, and by leaving Zitkala-Sa is severing this tie both to her mother and to her heritage. Zitkala-Sa's decision to leave does disrupt the cyclical way of life that Native Americans lived. The Western influence does cause her to lose the traditional aspects of the mother-daughter relationship.

"The Goophered Grapevine" is set in North Carolina in two distinct time periods. Shortly after Reconstruction (the period from 1865 to 1877, when the Southern states were reintegrated into the Union following the Civil War), a Northern businessman travels to the South to investigate the possibility of buying a vineyard. He encounters a former slave named Julius who tells him a story about something strange that happened on the plantation before slavery was abolished. The story reveals much not only about the cruelty of the slavery system but also about the folktales and beliefs of African

Many of us have probably been warned by our parents or friends not to forget where we came from - not just our hometowns - but the culture and values of these places, as well. Readers of Charles Chesnutt's short story The Wife of His Youth, might notice that its protagonist, Mr. Ryder, has indeed forgotten where he came from, that is, until he's given a surprising reminder. Chesnutt's story is divided into three sections, the first of which is devoted to the characterization of Mr. Ryder and the 'Blue Vein Society' to which he belongs in the 'Northern city' of Groveland. The organization is described as a 'little society of colored persons' established soon after the American Civil War. However, we also learn that most of the society's members are of mixed ancestry, and many of them, including Mr. Ryder, are considered 'more white than black.' Mr. Ryder's reputation as a refined, thrifty, and cultured gentleman has earned him the role of 'dean' in the society. He's well respected among its members and noted for his literary tastes, especially his consummate ability to recite poetry. Female members of the society have tried to win his affections. However, he showed no apparent interest in any of them until he met the widow, Mrs. Molly Dixon, who's made quite an impression on the other 'Blue Veins.' As the first section closes, Mr. Ryder is preparing to throw an exclusive ball in her honor, during which he plans to ask for her hand in marriage and secure his upwardly mobile ambitions. In the second section, Mr. Ryder continues to prepare for the upcoming ball by perusing some Tennyson poems to recite during his toast. However, his browsing is interrupted when a visitor arrives: a small, modestly dressed woman he describes as 'very black.' The woman's name is Liza Jane, and she's a former slave from Missouri who's been travelling the country for the past 25 years looking for her long-lost husband, Sam Taylor. Mr. Ryder listens intently as Liza describes how Sam was supposed to be sold by their master until she warned him and he escaped. As a result, Liza herself was whipped and sold downriver. Once the end of the Civil War ended and the slaves were free, she immediately began to search for Sam. Hearing this, Ryder tries to convince Liza that her searching at this point is probably in vain. Sam's most likely either dead or married to someone else now since slave marriages weren't binding after the War unless the couple chose to remain wed. Liza reassures Ryder that Sam's a good man who would never forget about her, and their meeting ends with Ryder's promise to contact her should he hear anything. As the final section of the story opens later that evening, the ball is in full swing. All the guests have arrived - many of them quite affluent - and after dancing and dinner, they're all called to order in preparation for toasts. As Mr. Ryder stands to give his toast 'to the Ladies' and presumably pop the question to Molly, he instead tells the crowd Liza's story. Once finished, he poses a hypothetical question to the audience: if Liza and Sam were to meet again after so long, should Sam acknowledge her? Of course, the sympathetic listeners agree that Sam should acknowledge his wife and he does and introduces her as "the wife of his youth."

he subject of the story is marriage, and the conflict between traditional Chinese arranged marriage and westernised marriage in which young people choose their marriage partner. The main characters are a happily married Chinese couple who live in America, the Spring Fragrances. Their marriage was arranged but as we are told early in the story, both are quite "Americanised". Mrs Spring Fragrance, we learn, is sympathetic to the plight of their young neighbour who has been promised in marriage but who wants to marry her chosen love.

Madame Valmondé visits L'Abri to see Désirée and her new baby, and on the way, she reminisces about when Désirée was herself a baby. Monsieur had found her asleep at the gateway of Valmondé, and when Désirée awoke, she could do little but cry for "Dada." People believe that a passing band of Texans had abandoned her, but Madame Valmondé believes only that Providence sent her this beautiful, gentle, and affectionate child because she lacked children of her own. When Armand Aubigny saw Désirée standing next to the stone pillar of the gateway eighteen years later, he fell in love with her immediately, although he had known her for years since first arriving from Paris after his mother's death. Monsieur Valmondé wanted to ensure that Désirée's unknown origin was carefully considered, but Armand did not care because he was so much in love. He decided that if she did not have a family name, then he would give her his own, and soon they were married. Madame Valmondé has not seen the baby for a month, and she shudders when she visits L'Abri because the place looks so sad without a woman to oversee the Aubigny household. Armand's mother had loved France too much to leave the country and had lived and died in France, and no woman has since taken over. Meanwhile, Armand is strict with his workers, and L'Abri has lost its easygoing nature. When Madame Valmondé sees Désirée lying beside her baby, she is startled to see the baby's appearance. Speaking in French, Désirée laughs that he has indeed grown strangely, and she remarks on his hearty cries. However, Madame Valmondé observes the child more closely and uneasily asks about Armand's thoughts. Désirée proudly says that Armand is glad to have a son and that he has softened considerably in his treatment of the slaves since his marriage and the child's birth. Armand is by nature imperious and exacting, but she loves him desperately, and he has not frowned since he fell in love with her. When the baby is three months old, Désirée is suddenly disturbed by a subtle feeling of menace, which is marked by a general air of mystery, unannounced visits from neighbors, and a strange change in her husband's behavior. He begins to avoid her and treat his slaves badly, and Désirée feels miserable. One afternoon, as she sits in her room, she looks at her son and at one of the one-fourth black children, who is fanning her son. The similarity between them dawns upon her, and she tells the other child to leave. Frightened, she watches her child until Armand enters. She asks him about the child and asks what it means, and he responds coldly that if the child is not white, then she must not be white. Desperately, she responds that she is indeed white, with brown hair, gray eyes, and white skin, but he cruelly tells her that she is as white as their mixed-race slave La Blanche, and he leaves the room. Despairing, Désirée writes to Madame Valmondé, who tells Désirée that she still loves her daughter and that Désirée should come back to Valmondé with the child. Désirée presents Madame Valmondé's response to Armand, and he tells her to leave. Without changing, Désirée takes her son from the nurse and walks not to Valmondé but to the deserted bayou, where she disappears. Weeks later, at L'Abri, Armand is having his slaves feed a bonfire. He places a willow cradle and other remnants of his marriage to Désirée on the pyre, and the last object to burn is a bundle of letters. Among the letters is an unrelated letter that came from the same drawer, which was sent from his mother to his father. In the letter, which Armand reads, his mother thanks his father for their love and thanks God that Armand will never learn that his mother has mixed blood.

Louise Mallard has heart trouble, so she must be informed carefully about her husband's death. Her sister, Josephine, tells her the news. Louise's husband's friend, Richards, learned about a railroad disaster when he was in the newspaper office and saw Louise's husband, Brently, on the list of those killed. Louise begins sobbing when Josephine tells her of Brently's death and goes upstairs to be alone in her room. Louise sits down and looks out an open window. She sees trees, smells approaching rain, and hears a peddler yelling out what he's selling. She hears someone singing as well as the sounds of sparrows, and there are fluffy white clouds in the sky. She is young, with lines around her eyes. Still crying, she gazes into the distance. She feels apprehensive and tries to suppress the building emotions within her, but can't. She begins repeating the word Free! to herself over and over again. Her heart beats quickly, and she feels very warm. Louise knows she'll cry again when she sees Brently's corpse. His hands were tender, and he always looked at her lovingly. But then she imagines the years ahead, which belong only to her now, and spreads her arms out joyfully with anticipation. She will be free, on her own without anyone to oppress her. She thinks that all women and men oppress one another even if they do it out of kindness. Louise knows that she often felt love for Brently but tells herself that none of that matters anymore. She feels ecstatic with her newfound sense of independence. Josephine comes to her door, begging Louise to come out, warning her that she'll get sick if she doesn't. Louise tells her to go away. She fantasizes about all the days and years ahead and hopes that she lives a long life. Then she opens the door, and she and Josephine start walking down the stairs, where Richards is waiting. The front door unexpectedly opens, and Brently comes in. He hadn't been in the train accident or even aware that one had happened. Josephine screams, and Richards tries unsuccessfully to block Louise from seeing him. Doctors arrive and pronounce that Louise died of a heart attack brought on by happiness.

Alcee Laballiere is a male upper-class Creole. He becomes betrothed to his cousin Clarisse. He actually likes Calixta, a beautiful lower-class Cajun. However, he cannot/will not marry beneath his class. Bobinot is a lower-class Cajun male and becomes betrothed to Calixta. When a hurricane devastates Alcee's rice crops, he takes off to the Acadian Ball, seeking mischief. Clarisse sees him go and follows. At the ball Alcee flirts with Calixta. Clarisse shows up and convinces Alcee to come home. Dismayed, Calixta resigns herself to marrying Bobinot. Alcee is jubilant when Clarisse tells him that she loves him and they are to be married.

In "The Storm," Alcée stops at Calixta's house to get out of the rain. Alcée and Calixta were in love once, and the storm reignites their passion. Both of them, however, are married to different people, and they know that when the storm ends they must part forever. Bobinôt and his son, Bibi, are at the market when the storm comes. Bobinôt's wife, Calixta, is at home, where Alcée seeks shelter from the storm. Six years prior to this storm, Calixta and Alcée ran away together to have an affair. A year later, they intended to run away together again, but their plans were ruined when Clarisse convinced Alcée to marry her. Calixta married Bobinôt. During the storm, Calixta and Alcée reignite their passion. However, both know that their relationship cannot continue, and Alcée leaves before Bobinôt returns.

Louisa Ellis sewing peacefully in her sitting room. It is late afternoon and the light is waning. We see Louisa going about her daily activities calmly and meticulously; she gathers currants for her tea, prepares a meal, feeds her dog, tidies up her house carefully, and waits for Joe Dagget to visit. Joe and Louisa have been engaged for fifteen years, during fourteen of which Joe has been away seeking his fortune in Australia. Louisa has been waiting patiently for his return, never complaining but growing more and more set in her rather narrow, solitary ways as the years have passed. During his visit, both he and Louisa are described as ill-at-ease. Joe sits "bolt-upright," fidgets with some books that are on the table, and knocks over Louisa's sewing basket when he gets up to leave. He colors when Louisa mentions Lily Dyer, a woman who is helping out Joe's mother. Louisa becomes uneasy when Joe handles her books, and when he sets them down with a different one on top she puts them back as they were before he picked them up. Once he leaves, she closely examines the carpet and sweeps up the dirt he has tracked in. Despite their awkwardness with each other, Louisa continues to sew her wedding clothes while Joe dutifully continues his visits. One evening about a week before the wedding date, Louisa goes for a walk. As she is sitting on a wall and looking at the moon shining through a large tree, she overhears Joe and Lily talking nearby. It quickly becomes apparent that they are in love and are saying what they intend to be their final good-byes to one another. Lily has decided to quit her job and go away. After they leave, Louisa returns home in a daze but quickly determines to break off her engagement. The next evening when Joe arrives, she musters all the "meek" diplomacy she can find and tells him that while she has "no cause of complaint against him, she [has] lived so long in one way that she [shrinks] from making a change." They part tenderly. Although that night Louisa weeps, by morning she feels "like a queen who, after fearing lest her domain be wrested away from her, sees it firmly insured in her possession."